Phoebos
15-05-2004, 23:12
Well, I've been out of the game for a while now, mainly due to lack of patience with its crawling pace, but now a few things (the move to jolt being a major one among them) have encouraged me to come back, and with my return, I plan to start developing something I've been thinking about for many months now; the sequel to the Phoebian NationStates Portal.
Currently running under the working title of NSP (sure you can work this one out for yourselves), I'm planning to move towards an entirely different approach from PNP. Whereas PNP was geared using the player as the primary focus, with nations as well as all other elements effectively existing on a lower level, NSP will be based entirely using a nation as the core framework. All other features (with the possible exception of, say, the autologin script) will operate under a specific nation; for example, each nation will have an archive of pages visited in the forums, nations viewed, etc, all of which will be separate from the data for any other nation.
Other changes: NSP will store all data, with the exception of configuration details, in a database rather than the registry. I'm currently writing this database, and this is in fact the reson for my post.
Because I'm designing the data layout from the outset, I want to get it down to perfection before I even start coding anything. If a nation-specific feature isn't there from the outset, it likely won't be there at all. Hence, once again, I'd like to know what things people would find really useful, what they couldn't care less about, etc.
For a start, here's what I'm considering at the moment:
Nations can be a member of groups. For a start, we have the key group of player-controlled. Beyond this, the user may create groups, such as allies, enemies, etc. Operations can then be performed on groups as well as on nations. I'm going to have to read the script guidelines again to determine what I'm allowed to do, but if they allow it, things such as group telegrams would not be out of the question.
Each nation will have a history of pages viewed, which would then be logically split into nations, regions, forum threads, offsite pages, etc. I may also make it possible for the user to define their own rules by which to group pages, but this is definitely a maybe, as it would involve allowing some kind of user built script to run within the application.
Details of each nation and small regions will be analysed, and stored in the database. If I can dig up the threads containing it, I may try to implement mojotronica's military might calculation, as well as a GDPCalc (probably not the pipian version, as I want to include tax rates in it). Again, analysis functions will most likely come later.
Relationships between groups and nations can exist, although I haven't thought of a conceivable use for them yet, apart from keeping track of things.
Issues can be stored, along with your responses to them; these issues will then be responded to automatically, to avoid having to repeatedly deal with issues you've already seen.
Finally, it should be possible to store notes on any nation, region, group, or visited page.
Now - any new ideas before I start to try and write this thing?
Note on scripts: I'm going to try and keep the number of scripts used in the portal to a minimum, both because of the scope for abuse, and because I think it detracts from the gameplay. As such, scripts are likely to be written to deal with the following:
Automatic nation login, to keep nations alive
Check telegrams and provide alerts
Deal with issues
Analyse small regions
Ultimately, upon loading a nation/region page, the HTML content will automatically be analysed and processed. I'm still considering whether to allow for a person to specify a small region and have all nations within it analysed at the same time. For large regions, the entire nation content will *not* be processed; firstly, it's load-intensive, and secondly, I think it's too open to abuse.
Of course, if people have no interest in this, I'd be just as happy to know so I don't waste my time trying to write it.
Currently running under the working title of NSP (sure you can work this one out for yourselves), I'm planning to move towards an entirely different approach from PNP. Whereas PNP was geared using the player as the primary focus, with nations as well as all other elements effectively existing on a lower level, NSP will be based entirely using a nation as the core framework. All other features (with the possible exception of, say, the autologin script) will operate under a specific nation; for example, each nation will have an archive of pages visited in the forums, nations viewed, etc, all of which will be separate from the data for any other nation.
Other changes: NSP will store all data, with the exception of configuration details, in a database rather than the registry. I'm currently writing this database, and this is in fact the reson for my post.
Because I'm designing the data layout from the outset, I want to get it down to perfection before I even start coding anything. If a nation-specific feature isn't there from the outset, it likely won't be there at all. Hence, once again, I'd like to know what things people would find really useful, what they couldn't care less about, etc.
For a start, here's what I'm considering at the moment:
Nations can be a member of groups. For a start, we have the key group of player-controlled. Beyond this, the user may create groups, such as allies, enemies, etc. Operations can then be performed on groups as well as on nations. I'm going to have to read the script guidelines again to determine what I'm allowed to do, but if they allow it, things such as group telegrams would not be out of the question.
Each nation will have a history of pages viewed, which would then be logically split into nations, regions, forum threads, offsite pages, etc. I may also make it possible for the user to define their own rules by which to group pages, but this is definitely a maybe, as it would involve allowing some kind of user built script to run within the application.
Details of each nation and small regions will be analysed, and stored in the database. If I can dig up the threads containing it, I may try to implement mojotronica's military might calculation, as well as a GDPCalc (probably not the pipian version, as I want to include tax rates in it). Again, analysis functions will most likely come later.
Relationships between groups and nations can exist, although I haven't thought of a conceivable use for them yet, apart from keeping track of things.
Issues can be stored, along with your responses to them; these issues will then be responded to automatically, to avoid having to repeatedly deal with issues you've already seen.
Finally, it should be possible to store notes on any nation, region, group, or visited page.
Now - any new ideas before I start to try and write this thing?
Note on scripts: I'm going to try and keep the number of scripts used in the portal to a minimum, both because of the scope for abuse, and because I think it detracts from the gameplay. As such, scripts are likely to be written to deal with the following:
Automatic nation login, to keep nations alive
Check telegrams and provide alerts
Deal with issues
Analyse small regions
Ultimately, upon loading a nation/region page, the HTML content will automatically be analysed and processed. I'm still considering whether to allow for a person to specify a small region and have all nations within it analysed at the same time. For large regions, the entire nation content will *not* be processed; firstly, it's load-intensive, and secondly, I think it's too open to abuse.
Of course, if people have no interest in this, I'd be just as happy to know so I don't waste my time trying to write it.